Clockwork
by mightyfineprint
Summary: Set revivalverse. An introspective Beadle Bamford observes and consequently takes startling interest in Fleet Street's devilish pie maker. Todd/Lovett and Bamford/Lovett.


_Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. _

Beautiful women with their diamonds and refined pearls had always been his favorite. Virgins particularly, all soft little gasps and embarrassed blushes and expensive garters.

Sometimes, and only sometimes, he wanted a bit of a departure. A woman with a bit more experience. Perhaps a woman who wasn't so desperately fragile and lovely as his regular lot.

It was then that Mrs. Lovett caught his eye.

There was something about her. There had always been something about her. Even so many years ago, when Alexander had lusted after the woman she boarded, there had been something about her, something very dangerous and very carnal. It made him curious.

So on his rounds one night, while polishing his pistol thoughtlessly, it struck him to stroll by her shop. He'd always played the seducer, but with Mrs. Lovett, he could foresee that the tables could possibly be turned.

A man, however, had been there. A tall, dark, broad-shouldered figure. Through the window, he'd seen her offer him a drink, wrap her arm around his shoulder.

He had expected the baker to have taken several men after her husband's death, and brushed it off carelessly, figuring he'd return the next night.

He did. Peering through her window from across the street, he saw the two in the parlor again. Both were drinking, looking variably miserable.

And so it continued for a week. The two drinking, or sitting in silence, or absent altogether.

At the market, however, he ran into the two in the most surprising situation - the faux Italian barber had initiated some sort of duel between himself and Mrs. Lovett's lover, apparently a barber.

He remembered vaguely how Mrs. Lovett had always looked at Mrs. Barker's husband rather oddly. He, too, had been a barber.

Mr. Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street, the man introduced himself. Tall and broad-shouldered, sunken cheeks and bald as though once a convict. He made an imposing if badly groomed figure. Mrs. Lovett hung on his every movement.

No matter; another man had never distracted him from his goals before.

When Alexander asked for his advice on seducing Johanna, he could not help but see it as a prime opportunity. He then recommended the barber Sweeney Todd - perhaps, if he could follow along, the seduction could commence?

Following his meeting with Alexander, once again on his patrols, Mrs. Lovett was with Todd again, soothing him about something. They drank. The Italian barber from the market place brushed past him, his boy scrambling at his heels. Lovett exited up the stairs, so he found it time to exit to the apothecary. His absinthe supply was running sadly low.

When he returned to Alexander's house that afternoon, the man was in quite the vociferous rage. The barber, he'd spat, the barber knew the sailor boy trying so desperately to steal his Johanna.

Johanna, Johanna, Johanna. If he didn't know better he'd tell Alexander to drop the girl already, move onto better sights. Find a wife, perhaps. However, Alexander had always been the type of man to want those girls; Johanna, however, was hardly her mother's daughter. Such delusions were doubtlessly dangerous.

It was becoming a rather disgusting habit, he thought vaguely as he passed Mrs. Lovett's shop again that night. However, he had many awful habits already, and one more couldn't possibly harm him.

The sight that met his eyes, however, was one to behold. Mrs. Lovett and her hellish barber were dancing. Actually dancing, a slow waltz, albeit, but dancing all the same.

Moreover, the stoic Todd was laughing. A booming, barking laugh he could hear across the street and through the parlor window. Mrs. Lovett was grinning wickedly, muttering something. Their noses brushed and his hands slid low on her hips.

It struck him that he had never heard Mrs. Lovett laugh. Something deep and throaty, he imagined, something that would eventually evolve into a cackle.

He stayed longer than he had ever before, rooted in some sort of morbid captivation. He observed as the two teased and groped and grinned at one another, alternating between dancing and pacing about the room in variable degrees of giddiness. They were raw and bared, it seemed, and vicious in their display.

He'd never seen anything like it. It was fascinating.

After that night, Mrs. Lovett's shop closed for a week and a half, but Todd's barbershop thrived. He considered going himself, once, but then thought better. Alexander, after all, was still enraged, and he hadn't been quite in his good graces as of late. Losing his job would profit no one. Of course he'd been trained as a lawyer, but the security of being a judge's beadle could never be transcended.

He did, however, stroll past on the opening night of Lovett's new and improved pie shop. Business was prospering, and the baker and her lover seemed to be too, trading winks and occasional nervous glances between the droves of customers. He also noted that the Italian's boy, whose master had disappeared sometime back, was employed by the baker.

He somehow reflected Todd with his sunken eyes, but still reminded him of Alexander's girl. He flitted nervously, back hunched, eyes darting.

In consequence, however, when he returned to the flat that night and tipped his hat at Johanna as she trotted up the stairs, he was reminded vaguely of Todd. It was the eyes, he concluded. Though he'd only met the man face to face once, the two had the same piercingly blue, intelligent and ever-so-slightly unhinged eyes.

He wondered how Alex could possibly lust after her. She was fragile and lovely and somehow entirely unattractive.

Alexander, too, seemed to see it. When his girl refused to marry him, at least. Some nonsense about running off with that sailor boy. In a bout of despair, Alex sent him to take her to Fogg's Asylum himself.

The girl made him uneasy. He had some troubles with the Hope boy the night on patrol; he begged and pleaded and screamed to see Johanna. So vastly ignorant, Hope questioned, "Is there no justice in this city?"

He kicked the boy off the streets, polished his gun and found an opium den. Through the haze and past the woman slumping against him, he saw a man, hairless and sunken, eyes unfocused, twisting an old photograph in his hands. He dimly thought of Sweeney Todd, and in his delirium, told himself he'd not return to the man's shop again.

However, he returned to Mrs. Lovett's house on orders three weeks later; Alexander had told him to inspect the cellar there, and perhaps become friendly with the landlady first. Looking tired, Alex told him he didn't want anyone hanged for the sickly smell rising from the woman's bakehouse.

When he did return, daring to patrol the same side of the street as the house, he peered in the window to see the two once again miserable and drinking. Mrs. Lovett was talking to the man, but he hardly seemed interested. They kissed chastely.

Love, he mused. A strange, sick, twisted sort of love between the two, more of a need.

No matter, however. He would have Mrs. Lovett yet.

The next night Alex, thoughtful and sorting through his post, sent him off to the pie shop to inform the baker of official complaints. It was depressingly foggy - he didn't know why he'd moved to London - so he took his hat and coat and set off.

He entered the parlor without invitation - Mrs. Lovett was nowhere to be found, but he could hear voices from the basement, her brassy carol echoing off the brick walls.

It was then that he spotted her piano. Walking to it, he recognized what a lovely instrument it was. Long before he'd met Alexander at college and leveled with his father, he'd studied piano with a passion he'd never been able to find in anything else.

Fingers trailing down the keys, skipping on the ivory, he pressed down a B. It was only slightly sharp, but it would do. He hadn't played in so long.

Playing the octave, then a scale, he settled himself at the bench for an arpeggio. Removing his hat, he began his favorite parlor song, knowing once he finished he'd try Chopin, maybe, or Bach.

_Sweet Polly Plunkett lay in the grass, _

_Turned her eyes heavenward, sighing -- _

_I am a lass who alas loves a lad, _

_Who alas has a lass in Canterbury._

"Why, Mr. Bamford!" Mrs. Lovett's laugh was all he expected, if holding just a hint of anxiousness. "I didn't know you were a music lover, too."

He could hear her grin. Smiling himself, he struck down another chord -- his favorite, G minor. He could hear Todd's footsteps upstairs, pacing relentlessly, like clockwork. A personal sort of metronome.

No matter. He would have Lovett yet.


End file.
